No arrests have been announced, and investigators have not said how the women died or given a motive.

The victims were 48-year-old Cynthia Serrano, her 21-year-old daughter April Serrano, and her 35-year-old sister Cathy de Leon, said the nephew of two of the women.

Most Read Stories

Angel Bueno sobbed softly as he stood across the street from the faded yellow, wood-frame house where the bodies of his cousin and his aunts, de Leon and Cynthia Serrano, had been found earlier. He said his aunt Cynthia raised him and had sent him a loving text message the night before her death.

“She was the sweetest lady. She even took care of my own daughter for a while, and she was praying for Junior,” Bueno, 25, said, placing a hand over his pregnant wife’s belly.

More than a dozen family members of the victims sat on the curb under police tape, consoling each other while waiting for an update.

Relatives said it was Serrano’s husband, James Serrano, who called 911. Anthony de Leon, the brother of Cynthia Serrano and Cathy de Leon, said his brother-in-law told him he returned from an overnight trucking shift early Tuesday when he made the 911 call to report the deaths.

Lorena Hamilton, who lives two houses away, said she did not hear or see anything unusual when the killings are believed to have occurred. The 27-year-old mother of four said she was helping her children prepare for school at the time.

She said she later “heard a lady screaming that her family was killed.”